By: Ted Westervelt  

The race is on, Mr. President. You have arrived on the international stage for the first time, and you need something in your worldwide "war on terrorism" - help.

How many people will you allow to be lumped under the definition of "terrorist" to get it?

The problem is, Mr. President, that "terrorist" is a very subjective word. The Reuters news service has come under heavy fire from the right wing for removing the word "terrorist" from their dictionary, referring to it is a "loaded term". The world is beginning to see why.

Conservative regimes around the world are all to eager to join in your fight, provided they can reap the benefits, of course. One main benefit is to get the US to lend some kind of credence to their very own "terrorist problems".

By: Gene Lyons  

At this writing, it's hard to say anything worthwhile about how the war on terrorism is going. As most Americans understand, bombing defenseless Afghanistan is the easy part. All the hard choices and the tough fighting lay ahead. Complex military and geopolitical puzzles will need to be solved. Sad to say, one's confidence in President Bush's ability to make the right calls has not been enhanced by recent cave-ins to the dimwit right on the relatively mundane domestic issues of stimulating the economy and airline safety.

Even as Washington pundits exult over his newfound "legitimacy", Bush appears to be blowing the political opportunity of a generation. With the nation united behind him and the "religious right" weakened by the crackpot pronouncements of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, the president had an excellent chance to move toward the center and away from the puerile anti-government rhetoric and save-the-millionaires economics of House Republicans like Dick Armey and Tom deLay. Instead, the White House has embraced them for reasons that virtually defy rational explanation.

"Mentally Retarded Treated Equally In Texas, Some Executed, Some Elected."

- Don Wright

"The only good I can find in fundamentalists so consumed by an afterlife, is they will make better dead people than live ones."

- Rack Jite

Top 10 Reasons Why Gore Would Be a Better Wartime President Than Bush

By: Bob Fertik

With Bush's approval ratings in the stratosphere, and with the American media worshiping at his feet, why would this writer go out on a limb to say that Al Gore would do a better job of leading America's war against terrorism?

Because it's true.

By: Hank Blakely  

John Ashcroft has a plan.

John Ashcroft is a simple man, and his plan is simple also.

By: Richard C. Knocke  

As I was returning home recently, I overheard two preschoolers arguing.

Their young voices were sharp and shrill in the crisp winter air. The smaller of the two adversaries, the dirt on his round face streaked by tears, hurled darts of insults at his tormentor. With as much vehemence as his innocence could muster, he snarled, "You dirty liberal!".

The term was thrown with conviction, as if the very weight of it would crush his foe. I paused and wondered, when did liberal become a four-letter word?

By: Ted Westervelt  

Damn the Torpedoes! Everything has changed since September 11, except Bush's support of failed middle eastern policy.

Okay America, in a clever circus of foreign policy we've tried almost every approach in the middle east over the past fifty years. We've propped up dictators, praised monotheistic kings as "moderates", traded arms for hostages, supported terrorists to drive out foreign invaders, and even fought a war against a man that the first George Bush compared to Adolph Hitler, only to leave him in power instead of risking the "stability" of the region by demanding his unconditional surrender.

We've also listened to a broad range of proponents of our medieval foreign policy in the region - from Henry Kissinger and his "Realpolitik" approaches, to the filtered pleadings for the continuation of these policies (in the name of stability) made by the same oil speculators that many believe served on Cheney's Energy Task Force.

"If men as individuals surrender to the call of their elementary instincts, avoiding pain and seeking satisfaction only for their own selves, the result for them all taken together must be a state of insecurity, of fear, and of promiscuous misery."

- Albert Einstein

By: Bill Press  

Here is one of the first rules of politics: It's not enough that I do well; I must also destroy my enemy.

Sadly, even in America's war against terrorism, that rule still drives a lot of Republicans. I see it on the op-ed pages. I get avalanches of it in my e-mail. I hear it in their public statements. For them, it's not enough that most Americans give George W. Bush credit for doing a good job in leading the nation against Osama bin Laden. They're not satisfied unless everybody also holds Bill Clinton responsible for getting us into this mess.

Domestic Extremists Ready to Take Advantage of Anthrax Scares

By: Michele Norris  

With almost daily reports of anthrax scares, government officials say they cannot rule out the possibility that the threats may be the work of homegrown terrorists.

"I'm not certain if it [ironing your mail] would have any impact on the [Anthrax] spores, but it may kill people as a result of house fires. You don't iron paper."

- Richard Weisman, director of the Poison Control Center in Miami-Dade County

"The Lord is getting ready to shake this nation. We have not yet seen his judgment on America... This thing that happened in New York was child's play compared to what's going to happen."

- Taliban-glist Pat Robertson

By: Robert Burns  

About 100 U.S. commandos carried out a secretive operation in the Taliban stronghold of southern Afghanistan, opening a new phase of the war on terrorism after nearly two weeks of punishing airstrikes, U.S. officials said Friday night.

By: Robert Parry  

There’s been nothing comparable to the "wag the dog" pundit prattle that undercut President Clinton in 1998 when he first went after Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terror network.

But there’s also been little or no reflection about how the feckless behavior of Washington’s political-journalistic elites over the past decade contributed to the deadly crisis the world is now facing. There’s been little or no self-criticism for letting the problems of the Middle East fester while pundits and journalists romped through juicier stories of Paula, Monica, JonBenet and Chandra.

By: Chris Floyd  

Both Bush and bin Laden spent sybarite youths, indulging idly and amply in the pleasures of the flesh - on someone else's dime - before embracing a fundamentalist religious faith that provides divine sanction for a narrow set of self-selected cultural norms while consigning all unbelievers to eternal damnation. Bush, for example, is on record as saying that all Jews are going to hell; a belief no doubt shared by his semblable, bin Laden. True, Bush later weasel-worded the issue, but his literalist faith, which he publicly affirms at every possible opportunity, is crystal-clear on this point.

Now both of these zealous believers have shimmied up the greasy pole of power - without the nuisance of actually being elected by popular vote - from whence they can rain death on their enemies, secure in the knowledge that they are fulfilling the will of God.

"Liberals are up to their old tricks again. Twenty years of treason haven’t slowed them down."

- Ann 'orexic whore' Coulter

If the president were serious about fighting terrorism, we would soon be attacking Saudi Arabia.

By: Robert Scheer  

It is wealthy Saudi businessmen, with the complicity of the Saudi government, who have financed the religious schools and Mujahedin training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan from which the latest wave of terrorism has erupted. Yes, the very same Saudi Arabia that we protected from Iraq in the Gulf War.

By: Paul Begala  

Democrats are children of the Enlightenment. They believe in the perfectibility of humanity. They revere systems even more than they do results. And so, in a crisis, they exhibit a nonpartisan patriotism that would make George M. Cohan proud.

Republicans are not process-oriented; they are results-oriented. Hence, Florida 2000 and the Supreme Court's theft of the election. And hence, the party's casting aside of a long-standing American tradition of eschewing partisanship when American lives are in danger.

"...remember that 'cul de sac' is just a fancy word for 'dead end'."

- Knute Berger, from an article (Dead End America) on AlterNet

"Though neither I nor anyone can tell you there will not be another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, it will be all right. They still can't win unless we give them permission. We are not about to give them permission."

- Bill Clinton, the last elected President

Abortion Rights Group Gets Suspicious Letters

From:  

A leading U.S. abortion rights group said on Monday (10/15), that 90 of its clinics and offices in at least 13 states had received envelopes containing threatening letters and an unidentified powdery substance.

By: Ken Alford  

Since the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed like a punctured balloon, the Military Industrial Complex has been in withdrawal. For a time, they tried to make China the enemy, but they were too capitalistically friendly to pursue. Then we were told that North Korea was making missiles that could reach America's shores. There was momentary credibility until people realized that North Korea was just another third world country. Then they lapsed into a debate about the necessity of a missile defense shield. It was politics as usual until September 11th.

By: Jill Zuckman  

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed sweeping anti-terrorism legislation Friday (10/12), to provide expanded powers to law enforcement, despite protests from civil libertarians and privacy advocates.

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